America’s K–12 public-education system is failing, but Congress needs to look before it leaps on education reform.
The education system is an anchor dragging down the economic aspirations of the next generation and the United States as a whole. The brunt of its failure is visited upon the poorest of our center-city minorities, making it a civil-rights issue. These dual dramas have made for a filmmaker’s dream, as witnessed by Waiting for Superman and The Lottery.
In light of this, it is encouraging to see the new year begin with a Washington Post op-ed by Education secretary Arne Duncan on the importance of building on the reforms of No Child Left Behind to improve K–12 education in the United States. As is widely recognized, education reform represents an area in which the desire for — and substance of — reform is bipartisan. Thus, one line of reasoning is that this should be the first item of business for the new Congress, thereby establishing an ability to undertake bipartisan actions.
This gets it wrong for four reasons. First, Congress has serious and pressing issues to resolve regarding the federal government’s overspending addiction and the upcoming debt limit, and those should come first. Education reform is not a dollar issue. Inflation-adjusted spending per student has roughly doubled over the past 20 years, but achievement has gone down — the problem is one of accountability.
Accountability has three facets. First, it must be built upon a foundation of increased opportunity for school choice. If failure for students means failure for the teaching bureaucracy, that’s accountability. Second, it includes such state-level efforts as Florida’s, which gives grades to schools and energizes parents to demand improvements in subpar performers. Finally, it includes oversight of federal programs to ensure that the taxpayers’ dollars are used effectively.
Second, while there are areas of agreement between Republicans and Democrats, members need to take some time to find out what is happening on the ground before rushing to pass a reauthorization bill. This is especially true given the large influx of nearly 100 new House members and senators, all of whom will need to get up to speed on the facts in an area where urban legend often rules.
For example, how did states and localities spend the stimulus funding (nearly $100 billion), “EduJobs” funding ($10 billion), and Race to the Top money they’ve gotten? Many states passed laws in the last year to improve their charter-school laws and to change the way they compensate high-performing teachers, in efforts to win Race to the Top grants. But the Race to the Top winners are only just now beginning to implement the reforms described in their applications. Are these reforms effective? Are they good models for others states? Given the importance of identifying and rewarding quality teaching (and identifying and eliminating low-quality teaching), these are questions that must be answered before taking the next steps.
Third, as Congress takes steps to improve the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the top priority must be to keep students, parents, teachers, and communities first, as they are the ones on the front lines and most able to improve student achievement. This requires serious outreach, not the kind of Washington-centric, ram-it-through-before-they-catch-us mentality that has prevailed in the past two years.
Finally, as members of Congress scrutinize the current law and digest the new reforms taken by states and localities, they must first and foremost ensure that their reauthorization balances the federal and local roles. The voters have made clear their distaste for federal overreach. Thus, for example, mandating that states adopt Common Core curriculum standards in order to receive funds is a step in the wrong direction. Instead, states should have the freedom to take this step on their own. At the same time, pretending that 100 percent local control would work is to de facto condemn the very students who need freedom from their failing schools. Getting this balance right will take time.
The 112th Congress should reform K–12 education. But getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly.
— Douglas Holtz-Eakin is president of the American Action Forum.
"The 112th Congress should reform K–12 education"
Bullpucky. Congress should have nothing to do with K-12 education. It should be 100% locally funded and controlled by local jurisdictions and their citizens.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCompare and contrast two statements. First, from Mr. Holtz-Eakin:
"The 112th Congress should reform K–12 education. But getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly."
And now from Laurence Kotlikoff, commenting on European labor laws and how they are stifling job creation in Europe:
"We have to change the labor laws. Not gradually, but quickly."
I'll leave it to the reader to decide which man is correct in his prescription.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEducation of the young is an extension of parenting.
Imagine if we were to say of parenting:
"At the same time, pretending that 100 percent local control would work is to de facto condemn the very children who need freedom from their failing parents. Getting this balance right will take time."
it's nonsense. Education should be controlled by the people who pay for it in their taxes. Period. Some districts will (like some parents) be better at the task, some worse. This is how life works.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'll agree with RoC on this one - wholeheartedly.
By what constitutional provision is the federal government spending money on education?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"[P]retending that 100 percent local control would work is to de facto condemn the very students who need freedom from their failing school" because those failing schools are the product of 100 percent local control.
Likewise, the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prove the shortcomings of 100 percent free market capitalism.
In neither case has the arrogation of federal power outside of that government's Constitutional role resulted in the waste of trillions of dollars.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood education starts with good structure and procedures. Once upon a time there were more than 100,000 school districts in the US; now there are fewer than 15,000.
The big city school districts are too big. They're too disconnected from parents who have thrown up their hands in frustration. Smaller districts with elected school boards could provide increased parental and community oversight of the professional educators and unions.
And a campaign to shrink school districts might be the equivalent of the school choice movement, but without the constitutional wrangling.See More
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEven if it is constitutional how can meaningful reform take place when one of our political parties is owned by the teachers union.
Answers please.
My solution is simple - vouchers for all.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Dallas Independent School District (DISD) improved so much over the past few years with the Department of Education’s assistance, they now graduate 50% (you heard that right 50%) of the students who enter high school! On the evening news you will see some of these “grads” being interviewed at the scene of some happening, apartment fire, or other crowd drawing event. As one watches these “grads” exhibit their grammatical and verbal skills, ability to think logically, all the while showing off their fashion sense, one finds oneself in awe at the amount of money squandered on them. The vision of a “hog with a wristwatch” comes to mind, except the hog in the DISD has a diamond encrusted, 24K gold Rolex and still can’t tell the time! Point is, the Department of Education isn’t going to change the local schools for the better till the parents step forward and instill an appreciation of learning, basic manners and personal initiative. Given that a large number of those parents haven’t a clue as to what those characteristics are – lots of luck. To quote Derb: “We are Doomed.”
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe easiest, quickest and most effective school reform would be to allow schools to resume expelling students who are discipline problems and those that make no effort to be successful.
Attacking teachers and teacher unions is easy, and politically valuable today, but it does nothing to solve the real problem.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Likewise, the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prove the shortcomings of 100 percent free market capitalism."
Except that Fannie Mae (full name Federal National Mortgage Association [notice the tautological name]) was created by the federal government in the 1930s and Freddie Mac (full name Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) was created by the federal government in 1970. Both were "privatized" in the 70s, but both existed with full acknowledgment from pols and investors that both had the full faith and credit of the United States behind them.
If your comment was meant to be tongue in cheek, then I apologize. However, if it were meant to be serious as a critique of capitalism, consider yourself educated.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have been tracking Common Core and reading all the implementing documents that exist but are in the background. It uses the power of the federal government purse to move away from academic knowledge because it is deemed unfair. Hence the emphasis on learning tasks and engaging in literacy activities with provided reading materials.
Students will know little and will have learned to respond to provided materials through emotions, not facts and logic. By the time most businesses, parents, and students realize that what their politicians put in place was a theoretical behavioral notion of what constitutes learning, it will be too late for the US.
Common Core was created in order to finally achieve John Dewey's vision of using the schools to create the perfect socialist citizens.
Why do you think the whole approach is based on the disastrous inquiry learning approach used to indoctrinate Soviet citizens and others behind the Iron Curtain?
This is actually what the reading and math wars were all about and why none of the proffered explanations never made much sense. As Dewey wrote years ago:
"You can't make socialists out of individualists-children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlease, no more "reform"!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn _Godless: The Church of Liberalism_ Anne Coulter responds to that Dewey quote with: "You also can't make socialists out of people who can read, which is probably why Democrats think the public schools have nearly achieved Aristotelian perfection." And we can see the fruits of his efforts as soon as 1955, when _Why Johnny Can't Read_ was published.
So my general point in these discussions is that this has been going on for so long, which such abject failure, that while Douglas Holtz-Eakin's initial point is spot on, upwards of half his framing of the issue is not to the point. Almost all of the instrumentalities we've used up to now have been abject failures; it's hard for me to support anything less than the complete Carthaginian "sow the ground with salt" destruction of the public school system, and efforts like "No Child Gets Ahead" "accountability" are only means to that end. Perhaps "a good first step", but nothing more.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat most needs doing can't be done in the 112th Congress: getting the federal government out of education decision-making that has traditionally -- and properly, and vastly more effectively -- been done at a state and local level.
End the federal subsidies and cut the federal strings that are attached to them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere Flesch got it wrong was his assumption in Why Johnny Can't Read that the Look-Say Method was being pushed out of ignorance of how to teach reading properly. Look- Say was deliberately developed by Dewey's colleagues and students to deemphasize reading. Think of limited literacy as the ultimate state censorship.
Dewey actually wrote of the need " to convince teachers of the need to downgrade literacy in the primary grades".
Common Core is based on the psycholinguistic strategies of Whole Language and assumes limited literacy skills where students can only read words they have previously been exposed to.
Because of the nature of the leveling criteria used to grade "readers" you systematically control access to printed information unless a parent intervenes or a teacher breaks out of the Guided Reading program approach.
The Common Core assessments are not tests but are performance tasks of general amorphous skills. They are being developed assuming that students need to be given materials on topics already within their knowledge and experience.
Think of Common Core as the ultimate constriction of a nation's individual and collective future abilities. We are funding our own destruction.
I got interested in what was really going on after reading that the new science CCSS standards assumed we would cease being a free market economy and the government would dictate the jobs of the future in a new international cooperative world. Say what?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI agree with the others who say the Federal Government should have nothing to do with education. Leave it up to the states and local jurisdictions and their citizens.
Also, introduce some fair competition. How is that private schools can offer such dramatically better results at a fraction of the cost of the public offerings? Combine that with an either/or choice of paying school taxes or paying private tuition, and we might find even the local governments eventually get out of the education game, except as needed for the day care of the dingbats until they're 16.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe only sense in which the federal government should reform education is that in which the British "reformed" Dunkirk.
Derb recently took up a position I've held for decades: Burn it down & sow the land with salt.
If federal "reform" meant that, I might consider it.
But think of the result of any reading of such reform should now include a reference to it's authorization in the Constitution. At least that'll give us a good laugh.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere's where I go all conservative on y'all.
It's the values. Period. We can spend fifty quadrillion dollars on education, but we won't advance one inch the prospects of kids who lack two parents, a learning-rich environment, and the same inculcated imperatives you and I have. No amount of money can fix trailer trash dads and crack wh*re moms.
Federal, schmederal. Go arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you make an apples to apples comparison, US schools are actually very good.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI must agree that K-12 belongs in the local and state jurisdiction. There is no reason for federal interference unless the states or localities are found to be negligent or incapable. And then the interference should be brief as possible--as a civil rights issue, perhaps.
I myself am a classical educator, and I have seen first hand that even kindergarten students can learn to read. The problem with public education is lack of content and lack of expectations about content. The federal government should not be in the education business. Period.
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